They'd stolen his humanity, leaving him with a shattered shell of moral precepts.
The other guy ignored Jeffrey's undead dog who'd latched onto his dickhead pal and put his steely grip on Jeffrey.
Zero brains.
Hell, the dude was strong! Felt like a vise clamp. Jeffrey tried to jerk his arm out of the guy's hand and couldn't.
Jeffrey felt his mind command the dog before the thought was fully formed and it went right for the guy's gonads.
That worked awesome.
He forgot all about Jeffrey, the zombie Rottweiler riding the loser to the ground.
Testie triumph.
Jeffrey stepped over the howling pair as five more guys in black suits raced around the corner of the testing and training facility.
Jeffrey's home.
One had a flame thrower.
No! Jeffrey shouted and the dogs raised their dead gazes to him, his emotional signature of extreme fear stopping their feasting.
Blood dripped from their muzzles, gonad-destroyer licked his chops and Jeffrey shuddered, the guy moaning and writhing around like a snake on the floor.
The lead government dude let loose on the flames and torched the dogs where they stood. The dogs howled as the heat and flame flowed over their black fur, singeing and engulfing their bodies in a wave of heat.
Hot tears rolled down Jeffrey's face as he watched the zombie guard dogs destroyed. While two of the suits each held one of his arms pinned against their bodies.
Jeffrey's hate grew larger, blackness blooming where only a seed had germinated before.
A tall skinny dude walked down the hall with purpose, a cigarette dangling from lips that held a bluish tinge. “Hold him,” he said casually.
Jeffrey Parker knew who he was.
His hate became like a universe. It orbited Jeffrey and his head felt light, weightless.
The Smoking Man said, “This is a little taste of what you can expect, Parker.” He gave a casual glance at the smoldering dogs that lay oozing on the hall floor, the medicinal white now covered in smoking gore that colored the surrounding surfaces like bloodied soot.
He leaned into Jeffrey, their faces almost touching, the smoke from his cigarette the only barrier. “Every time you do not cooperate, we're going to let all the road kill that is piling up here like an undead menagerie feel the whip.”
Jeffrey's mouth fell open.
Road kill?
The Smoking Man straightened, his hands going to his bony hips like protruding handles.
He was a walking skeleton.
“That's right,” he flicked his ash and it fluttered down like gray rain on the corpses of the dogs.
Jeffrey swiped at his eyes angrily.
“I know this is your soft spot.” He smiled at Jeffrey and he saw it for what it was. Plenty of Mom's Guys had smiled at Jeffrey that way. Like they had a dirty joke and he was the butt of it.
Emotion surged and Jeffrey was helpless to stop it as every insect that had died within a mile of the facility poured into the hall, sweeping under the doors like black fog, heading straight for the government jerkoffs.
“Fuck,” Smoking Man muttered and hit Jeffrey in the back of the head, right where it'd steal consciousness if executed perfectly.
It was obvious he'd had practice as Jeffrey crumpled into a boneless bundle next to the zombie dogs he'd called without knowing.
The cloud of bugs responding to his emotional turmoil like an automatic turnstile churned to an abrupt halt when Jeffrey's eyes closed. The bugs scattered like a changing current and swarmed back the way they'd come.
The hall turned black, the ceiling lights that were held in grid like cages softened to a pinpoint of yellow buzzing light and Jeffrey lost the battle of wakefulness, slipping into the oblivion of the abused.
“Why'd ya do that?” McKenzie asked Smoker. Even Smoker's own men thought of him that way. For he was the ghost of this little operation. He was the cleaner. He cleaned up messes no one else would touch.
They didn't even know his name.
Fine by McKenzie, Smoker gave him the fuckin' creeps. A hard thing to get in this job.
Smoker looked down at the lanky teenager on the floor, pale from the fun of the latest revelation. He'd come around, both physically and metaphorically.
Jeffrey Parker would comply, or suffer more of the same.
They'd done a little poking around and finally determined that the one area that was a painful oozing wound was the killing of the dead that were already dead.
No morbidity paradox there.
Not any dead, but Jeffrey Parker's dead. And because of his youth, his absolute lack of skill and abundance of power, he was raising every dead thing within five miles of their covert training facility.
He smiled. That just worked out Jim dandy, Smoker thought, taking a long, lung-filled drag from the stub of his cig.
He looked at his underling. “Had to be done. This kid has to know who's boss. We can't have him doing whatever he wishes.” Smoker tapped his temple, an inch of ash dropping as he did. “He'll be of no use to us, running amok... raising whatever he likes.” He looked down at Parker's still form, the reek of the dead dogs permeating even his dead olfactory senses, mostly ruined by his nasty habit.
He lit a new cig with the red hot ember of the old, dragging in soft bursts, causing the flame to ignite instantly.
Smoker blew the smoke into McKenzie's face and he swung a palm in front of his nose to banish it.
Smoker smiled.
“He's just a kid, did you have to bash him?” McKenzie persisted.
Smoker looked at McKenzie. “Ask Walter and Lents.”
McKenzie looked down at guys he'd partnered with, done surveillance with. Other shit. Cleaning up garbage for the good old U.S. of A. Of course, if the American people really knew what the price of their freedom, or imprisonment was, it would be a different nation. Walters was holding his crotch, sweat running down ashen skin with rapid breathing edging toward shock. Lents' hand dangled from his arm, hanging at an awkward angle.
“They need medical attention, right?” Smoker asked rhetorically.
McKenzie reluctantly agreed. He hated this asshole. He bossed them around, he stank... he was merciless, even for their job.
They were assassins, couldn't sugar-coat a turd.
But Smoker was the Cleaner. He cleaned shit up. He had an absolute nose for averting trouble. He'd been uncanny on operations that necessitated any degree of intuition. McKenzie shuddered to think of what he would have become if Smoker could have received the Cocktail. Thank Christ he was out of puberty. Thinking of this guy with a paranormal ability? Hell, he was creepy enough naturally.
All this passed through McKenzie's mind in seconds. He responded to Smoker in as level a response as he could, “Yeah... I'll- I'll phone it in.”
“Nah, you get cleaning up this mess and I'll pulse it.”
McKenzie whipped his head in Smoker's direction and Smoker held up the new Pulse Device.
“Shit! How'd you rate?” McKenzie said in the middle of a white hall with two torched zombie dogs and an unconscious teenager.
“How do you think?”
Right, McKenzie thought, he did what he was told.
Whatever it was, Smoker got it done.
Of course he'd be the first to get a device.
McKenzie had to know. “Do you like it?”
“Oh yes. It makes communication perfect. No matter what the interference.”
Don't ask, he told himself.
He did anyway. “What interference?”
Smoker smiled.
“Blood, or... other circumstance that would get in the way of conveying information.”
“Oh,” McKenzie said, wishing he hadn't asked.
Smoker turned on his heel, walking away. As he moved down the hall he spoke without turning, his hand raised in the air, “Clean this up. Get the C-M back to his room.”
McKenzie looked at the two on the floor, bloo
d everywhere, the dogs stinking up the hallway enough to make him gag while the AFTD slept on the floor and he sighed.
Sometimes his job was beyond fucked up.
They began cleaning.
It took five hours. The stains were all gone, you'd never know it had happened. Only the smell lingered in the hall.
Eau de cooked corpses.
Jeffrey Parker woke up with a head that felt like a truck had rolled over. He couldn't be cleaned. His psyche had a stain that never left, spreading like an insidious disease of hate and distrust. For the ones that took him, for what he couldn't help.
Parker would find a way to take it down.
All of it.
Jeffrey Parker made a pact with himself that day. It would take patience and perseverance.
And the dead, of course.
He began to cooperate with his schooling, his natural intelligence outpacing some of the tutors; eventually forcing his ward's hand in the hiring of college-level professors.
Jeffrey Parker became fluent in five languages with a special aptitude in math and science. But it was his specialized talents that lent him the ability, when the time came, to assist another AFTD in a future he was yet unaware of.
It proved integral to his life plan.
He didn't know it then, but Kyle Hart's unborn child would be the catalyst to what he'd envisioned from that moment.
Some things were meant to be.
Caleb Sebastian Hart was no accident. No fluke of Biology or genetics. It was not at the point of Jeffrey that death began, but Caleb.
He was the death inception.
A boy not yet born, but of such critical importance that he would change history.
Jeffrey worked toward his goal.
Without fail, without wavering.
*
2015
Kyle cupped his large hands around Ali's shoulders, his warm brown eyes searching her stormy blue gaze. “You worry too much, Ali, he'll be perfectly fine.”
Ali's eyes filled with tears, she had never warmed up to the prime booster for the Cocktail. She hated the idea of medications, things that altered one's natural defense system. The breach of all the natural defenses of the body, the Cocktail entering into the last defense of the body, undiluted? Her five-year old boy being little more than a guinea pig? She shook her head at Kyle.
“Think rationally, Ali.” His eyes searched hers. “Would I let anything happen to our son? The only child we've chosen to bring into this world.”
Alicia thought about it. No, certainly not. But she was a mother and there was just something that was... instinctive about it. Being a mom was more than statistics, it was a special intuition that they all had.
And hers was ringing alarm bells so loudly her teeth thrummed with it. She knew it wasn't steeped in logic. Ali had read the release pulse on the whole deal. It all seemed reasonable.
“You know, Pop doesn't like it either,” Ali stated as a last resort.
Kyle sighed. He loved Ali's dad but... Mac was a black and white thinker.
Very.
Anything that was modern, or heaven forbid, government-initiated or driven, it made his hackles rise.
He regarded it all with express suspicion.
Of course, Mac had been a special ops military man. Maybe there was a grain of truth in there somewhere.
Perhaps Mac knew more than they realized.
“Honey, listen.” Kyle stared into her softening eyes and knew he'd won the battle but maybe not the war. “Your dad is slightly paranoid. You know this. Especially about government programs.”
“What's this about my paranoia, Kyle?” Mac asked, breezing into the living room.
“Hi, Peanut,” Mac said, nodding at his daughter, taking instant note of her concerned expression.
“Hi, Pop.”
Kyle saw the question on Mac's face and headed it off at the pass. “I was just reassuring Ali that the Cocktail will not be a problem, Mac.”
Mac narrowed his eyes at his naïve son-in-law, whom he loved but thought was a tad too trusting. He thought society was altruistic. Mac knew they'd kill their own grandmothers for the right price.
Mac shoved a dry cig in his mouth. He'd light up the second he walked outside. He opened the corner of his mouth to reply when Caleb came rushing in with his hands cupped around something.
“Whatcha got there, sport?” Mac asked.
Caleb gave Gramps wide eyes. He was a Big Man and always had a Cancer Stick in his mouth.
But he was neat and showed Caleb cool stuff. That's what Gramps called it: Cool Stuff. Learning Stuff.
“I have a bug, Gramps!”
“Ooh, ick,” Ali said with an indulgent smile but looked vaguely ill.
“Oh yeah? What kind do ya got there?”
Caleb opened his hand and a small salamander lay there gasping in his palm.
“Oh no, pal, that won't do. Let's get him out where he can breathe a mite better.”
“Pop...” Ali began, “you just want to go outside to smoke.”
Mac looked at his Environmentally Responsible daughter and shook his head. How'd she ever turned out so uptight was one of the mysteries of his life. Of course, payback was always swimmingly fun as Caleb was turning out to be a bundle of chaos. Discharging his brand of wildness throughout her neat and orderly existence.
“Yup,” Mac replied and winked.
Ali sighed. “Okay, not too long today, Pop. Caleb needs a nap.”
Caleb heard the N word and stomped. “I'm no baby! I will not SLEEP!” his shouted promise echoed in the house even after he ran out the door.
Mac turned his face away so Ali wouldn't see the smirk that was hiding there.
He was full of piss and vinegar that boy. It occurred to Mac that they might have had their hands full with more children.
Maybe just with the one, Mac thought with a grunt.
“Caleb!” Ali began and Mac turned. “Let him be, Peanut. Nap-smap! He's too old for that now.”
“But I think he needs the rest with the prime booster later today.”
“Nah,” Mac dismissed with a hand, edging closer to the door. “I think we'll just push through that whole thing Pumpkin, then take him out for ice cream after.”
“Dad!” Ali wailed.
“Gotta go, Peanut!”
Mac escaped like a coward, leaving Kyle with Ali. He could figure her out. After all, Mac would rather face five of the enemy than the wrath of his daughter's words.
God love her, but she talked too damn much.
Caleb was stuffed in the front seat of Gramp's stock, bright orange 1970 Bronco. The white top gleamed in the sun that slanted off it in the glare of early autumn. Mac slowed his stride to light his smoke and blew out a relaxing puff into the crisp air that was almost fall.
Nope, he wasn't keen on this damn Molotov Cocktail they were giving all the kiddies. But if Kyle said it was okay, then it was. His son-in-law was naïve, not stupid. In Mac's experience that could sometimes mean the same thing. But in Kyle's case it didn't.
Caleb raised a chubby hand and waved, the salamander floating belly up in the cement bird bath-dead.
Caleb had done what he was told, but not soon enough. The thing was floating around in his daughter's inner sanctuary, her prized atrium had a dead lizard bobbing around.
Marvelous.
He slipped into the driver's side, carefully putting out his cig in the old ashtray.
“Gramps!” Caleb said, swinging his legs back and forth.
“Yes, partner?”
“The salamander didn't swim when I put him in the pool in mommy's garden.”
Mac gave solemn eyes to Caleb. “He needed the water to live, Caleb.”
Caleb nodded, just as solemn. “He's dead now,” Caleb said with finality.
“Uh-huh, that he is.”
Caleb stared at his Gramps. He was Very Old but Mommy said he was also Very Brave.
“Are you ascared of dead stuff, Gramps?” Caleb asked, his eyes
wide.
Mac watched his small legs pump back and forth on the seat then finally answered truthfully. Because it was easy, and it was Caleb.
The young were guileless.
“Nope.”
Caleb met Gramp's eyes. “Me neither.”
“Yeah?” Gramps said with a chuckle. Kids were a kick in the pants.
“Nope,” Caleb said, copying his Gramps exactly, “the dead are okay.”
Gramps eyes narrowed. “You don't say?”
“Uh-huh,” Caleb said.
His legs swung and Gramps said, “Buckle-up, pal.”
“K.”
Mac watched as he fiddled with the seat belt and gave his head a pat. “That's a good boy that you're not scared of death.”
“I know. All things die, right?”
“Yup.”
“I'll die someday,” Caleb said as a statement not a question.
Mac paused. “Yes, all things die, Caleb.”
Caleb sighed. “Yeah, I wish we could fix it.”
“What son?” Mac asked, his eyes on the road.
“Death,” his five-year old grandson said.
Gramps gave him an uneasy glance.
What a strange thing to say, he thought.
Mac would often think of that years later.
It hadn't been so strange after all.
CHAPTER 6
1929
Clyde was so in tune with Maggie that he swore he could hear her screaming through the fog of his consciousness.
He swung his head from side to side, clearing it as he slumped over the stool, the hard seat biting into his backside, his throbbing fists dangling between his knees.
Blood and sweat mingled to drip in a small river from his left eyebrow. It'd need stitches later.
He was taking the beating of his life. His jaw felt unhinged and one eye was swollen shut. Dempsey had gone where no other opponent had gone before. He'd gotten more licks on Clyde than all his other fights combined.
Dempsey's strikes were like blurred lightning.
Somebody shoved water at Clyde. He took a swig, swishing it around in his craw, spitting it out in the dented tin bucket that was swung below his mouth, the cut on his lip stinging as he spit the mucous-filled blood.
The Death Series, Books 1-3: Death Whispers, Death Speaks and Death Inception (The Death Series, Volume 1) Page 71
